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• Multitenant Design for SQL Azure: White Paper Available

  - by Herve Roggero

  Cloud computing is about scaling out all your application tiers, from web application to the database layer. In fact, the whole promise of Azure is to pay for just what you need. You need more IIS servers? No problemo... just spin another web server. You expect to double your storage needs for Azure Tables? No problemo; you are covered there too... just pay for your storage needs. But what about the database tier, SQL Azure? How do you add new databases easily, and transparently, so that your application simply uses more of SQL Azure if its needs to? Without changing a single line of code? And what if you need to scale back down? Welcome to the world of database scalability. There are many terms that describe database scalability, including data federation, multitenant designs, and even NoSQL depending on the technical solution you are implementing.  Because SQL Azure is a transactional database system, NoSQL is not really an option. However data federation and multitenant designs offer some very interesting scalability options that are worth considering. Data federation, a feature of SQL Azure that will be offered in the future, offers very interesting capabilities available natively on the SQL Azure platform. More to come in a few weeks... Multitenant designs on the other hand are design practices and technologies designed to help you reach flexible scalability options not available otherwise. The first incarnation of such a method was made available on CodePlex as an open source project (http://enzosqlshard.codeplex.com).  This project was an attempt to provide a sharding library for educational purposes.  All that sounds really cool... and really esoteric... almost a form of database "voodoo"... However after being on multiple Azure projects I am starting to see a real need. Customers want to be able to free themselves from the database tier, so that if they have 10 new customers tomorrow, all they need to do is add 2 more SQL Azure instances. It's that simple. How you achieve this, and suggested application design guidelines, are available in a white paper I just published.  The white paper offers two primary sections. The first section describes the business and technical problem at hand, and how to classify it according to specific design patterns. For example, I discuss compressed shards through schema separation. The second section offers a method for addressing the needs of a multitenant design using a new library, the big bother of the codeplex project mentioned previously (that I created earlier this year), complete with management interface and such. A Beta of this platform will be made available within weeks; as soon as the documentation will be ready.   I would like to ask you to drop me a quick email at [email protected] if you are going to download the white paper. It's not required, but it would help me get in touch with you for feedback.  You can download this white paper here:   http://www.bluesyntax.net/files/EnzoFramework.pdf . Thank you, and I am looking for feedback, thoughts and implementation opportunities.

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• Announcing the Winnipeg Code Camp!

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Alright, the event website will be up this weekend, but I wanted to get the word out sooner than later. For the third year, we’re holding the Winnipeg Code Camp! When: Saturday, February 26th Where: Red River College, Princess Street Campus Cost: FREE!!! Continental Breakfast and Hot Lunch Provided! We’re going to have four rooms worth of sessions going on like last year, so lots of great sessions and great content. To register for the event (we need to know numbers for ordering the food), please do so here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1180632303 If you’re interested in speaking at the Code Camp, please contact me at darcy.lussier at gmail.com. Note that we have only 20 slots for the day, so contact me sooner than later! D

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• Are you ready for SharePoint 2010?

  - by Michael Van Cleave

  With SharePoint's next release on the horizon (May 12th) many of my clients and colleagues are starting to ramp up for the upcoming tidal wave of functionality. Microsoft has been doing a terrific job of getting as much information out in the public lime light as possible over the last few months and I think that will definitely pay off with regards to acceptance of the new version of SharePoint. However, there are still some aspects of the new platform that are a little murky. Aspects such as: "Should we upgrade?" "Will my current installation upgrade without issues?" "What benefits will I see by upgrading?" "What are the best practices for upgrading or best practice in general relating to 2010?" "How should we plan to deploy SharePoint 2010 in our organization?" There is a ton of information out there, but how do you go about getting some of these questions answered? Well, I am glad you asked. (J) ShareSquared will be delivering a FREE SharePoint 2010 Readiness Webinar that will cover Preparation, Strategies, and Best Practices for the upcoming version of SharePoint. The webinar will be presented by 2 of ShareSquared's outstanding SharePoint MVP's; Gary Lapointe and Paul Stork. As all those T.V. commercials say… "Space is limited, so sign up now!" Just kidding, well kind of but not really. I am sure that the signup will be huge and space is really limited so the sooner you sign up the better. I would hate for any of you to miss out. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to shoot me a e-mail through my blog or contact ShareSquared directly. See you at the webinar! Michael

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• Invitation for the ArcSig meeting on 03/16/2010

  - by Rainer

  Our March Fort Lauderdale ArcSig meeting will be on 03/16/2010 - 6:30 PM at the Microsoft Office in Fort Lauderdale. Quent Hershelman, Microsoft Developer Solution Specialist, presents: Tips, Tricks and Features for Visual Studio 2010. Register at: http://www.fladotnet.com/  - Free Pizza and soft drinks! I am looking forward to see you at the meeting! Rainer Habermann  ArcSig Side Director

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• Microsoft MVP Again for 2011

  - by Vincent Maverick Durano

  Normal 0 false false false EN-PH X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} I just got a great news from Microsoft that I’m re-awarded as Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for this year.  This is my 3rd year in a row as an MVP and  I’m of course very happy about and feel honored by it. Woohoo!! Here’s the Proof =} Dear Vincent Maverick Durano, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2011 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in ASP.NET/IIS technical communities during the past year. The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honor your significant contributions and say "Thank you for your technical leadership."     BIG thanks to Microsoft, my MVP Lead Lilian Quek, readers, and everyone who has supported me!!!

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• Windows Phone 7 Silverlight / XNA development talk

  - by subodhnpushpak

  Hi, I presented on Windows Phone 7 app development using Silverlight. Here are few pics from the event Windows Phone 7 development VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL     I demonstrated the Visual studio, emulator capabilities/ features. An demo on Wp7 app communication with an OData Service, along with a demo on XNA app. There was lot of curious questions; I am listing them here because these keep on popping up again and again: 1. What tools does it takes to develop Wp7 app? Are they free? A typical WP7 app can be developed either using Silverlight or XNA. For developers, Visual Studio 2010 is a good choice as it provides an integrated development environment with lots of useful project templates; which makes the task really easy. For designers, Blend may be used to develop the UI in XAML. Both the tools are FREE (express version) to download and very intuitive to use. 2. What about the learning curve? If you know C#, (or any other programming language), learning curve is really flat. XAML (used for UI) may be new for you, but trust me; its very intuitive. Also you can use Microsoft Blend to generate the UI (XAML) for you. 3. How can I develop /test app without using actual device? How can I be sure my app runs as expected on actual device? The WP7 SDK comes along with an excellent emulator; which you can use for development/ testing on a computer. Later you can just change a setting and deploy the application on WP7. You will require Zune software for deploying the application on phone along with Developers key from WP7 marketplace. You can obtain key from marketplace by filling a form. The whole process for registering  is easy; just follow the steps on the site. 4. Which one should I use? Silverlight or XNA? Use Silverlight for enterprise/ business / utility apps. Use XNA for Games app. While each platform is capable / strong and may be used in conjunction as well; The methodologies used for development in these platforms are very different. XNA works on typical Do..While loop where as Silverlight works on event based methodology. 5. Where are the learning resources? Are they free? There is lots of stuff on WP7. Most of them are free. There is a excellent free book by Charles Petzold to download and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone is full of demos /todos / vidoes. All the exciting stuff was captured live and you can view it here; in case you were not able to catch it live!! @ http://livestre.am/AUfx. My talk starts from 3:19:00 timeline in the video!! Is there an app you miss on WP7? Do let me know about it and I may work on it for free !!! Keep discovering. Keep is Simple. WP7. Subodh

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• App_offline.htm and SharePoint and wholly contained images&hellip;

  - by Shawn Cicoria

  The question came up today if we could use an “app_offline.htm” file along with HTML in that file that would reference images. First, I wasn’t 100% sure if the app_offline.htm would work, but it sure did.  Since it’s just the Asp.net hosting process that detects the file, it circumvents loading any HttpApplications (SharePoint) beyond just serving up the HTML content. The second question was about having something more than text, specifically <img> tags.  So, since the HttpHandlers are taking all requests for all resources through the Asp.net pipeline, as soon as the app_offline.htm file is there, nothing else will get served from within that web application.    Sure, we could host the file (images) outside the web app, but what fun would that be? So, I found this link on using an image in app_offline.htm http://pbodev.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/app_offline-htm-with-an-image-yes-we-can/ Turns out, the src tag (in fact many tags) can take a stream of data represented by a mime type and base64 encoding inline – such as: <img style="height:515px;width:700px;border-width:0px;" src="data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgA   One of the problems we had was the image was too large; so, sliced up the image, but ended up with spaces between each of the slices.  Low and behold, it works with CSS as well.   <style type="text/css"> .Slice_1_jpg { position: absolute; left:0px; top:0px; width:1011px; height:148px; background: url("data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZ   And the body is as follows: <body> <div class="Slice_1_jpg"> </div>   For this, I wrote a little Asp.Net site that, using a file upload control, will generate the necessary contents of what needs to go in the “data” value for the stream.  A link to the code is here: http://cicoria.com/downloads/CreateBase64OfImage.zip

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• NoVa Code Camp 2010.1 &ndash; Don&rsquo;t Miss It!

  - by John Blumenauer

  Tomorrow, June 12th will be the NoVa Code Camp 2010.1 held at the Microsoft Technical Center in Reston, VA.  What’s in store?  Lots of great topics by some truly knowledgeable speakers from the mid-Atlantic region.  This event will have four talks alone on Azure, plus sessions ASP.NET MVC2, SharePoint, WP7, Silverlight, MEF, WCF and some great presentations centered around best practices and design. The schedule can be found at:  http://novacodecamp.org/RecentCodeCamps/NovaCodeCamp201001/Schedule/tabid/202/Default.aspx The session descriptions and speaker list is at:  http://novacodecamp.org/RecentCodeCamps/NovaCodeCamp201001/Sessions/tabid/197/Default.aspx We’re also fortunate this year to have several excellent sponsors.  The sponsor list can be found at:  http://novacodecamp.org/RecentCodeCamps/NovaCodeCamp201001/Sponsors/tabid/198/Default.aspx.  As a result of the excellent sponsors, attendees will be enjoying nice food throughout the day and the end of day raffle will have some great surprises regarding swag! I’ll be presenting MEF with an introduction and then how it can be used to extend Silverlight applications.  If you’re new to MEF and/or Silverlight, don’t worry.  I’ll be easing into the concepts so everyone will leave an understanding of MEF by the end of the session.   Don’t miss NoVa Code Camp 2010.1.  See YOU there!

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• Hello From South Florida

  - by Sam Abraham

  Fellow Blog Readers: I figured I use my first blog post on GeeksWithBlogs to introduce myself.   I recently relocated from Long Island, NY to South Florida where I joined a local company as Software Engineer specializing in technologies such as C#, ASP.Net 3.5, WCF, Silverlight, SQL Server 2008 and LINQ, to name a few. I am an MCP and MCTS ASP.Net 3.5, looking to get my .Net 4.0 certification soon.   Having been in industry for a few years so far, I figured I would share with you my take on the importance of being involved(at least attending) in local user groups.   I am a firm believer that besides using a certain technology, the best way to expand one’s knowledge is by sharing it with others and being equally open to learn from others just as much as you are willing to share what you know.   In my opinion, an important factor that makes a good developer stand-out is his/her ability to keep abreast with the latest and greatest even in areas outside his/her direct expertise.   Additionally, having spoken to various recruiters, technical user group attendees are always favorably looked upon as genuinely interested in their field and willing to take the initiative to expand their knowledge which offers job candidates good leverage when competing for jobs.   I believe I am very blessed to be in an area with a very strong and vibrant developer community. I found in the local .Net community leadership a genuine interest in constantly extending the opportunity to all developers to get more involved and encouraging those who are willing to take that initiative achieve their goal: Speak in meetings, volunteer at events or write and publish articles/blogs about latest and greatest technologies.   With Vishal Shukla (Site director for the West Palm Beach .Net User Group) traveling overseas, I have been extended the opportunity to come on board as site coordinator for FladotNet's WPB .Net User Group along with Venkata Subramanian, an opportunity which I gratefully accepted.   Being involved in running a .Net User Group will surely help me personally and professionally, but my real hope is to use this opportunity to assist in delivering the ultimate common-goal: spread the word about new .Net Technologies, help everybody get more involved and simply have fun learning new things.   With my introduction out of the way, in the next few days I will be posting some notes on an upcoming talk I will be giving about MVC2 and VS2010 in mid-April.   Environment.Exit(0); --Sam

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• Getting App.config to be configuration specific in VS2010

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently wanted to have a console application that had configuration specific settings. For instance, if I had two configurations “Debug” and “Release”, depending on the currently selected configuration I wanted it to use a specific configuration file (either debug or config). If you are wanting to do something similar, here is a potential solution that worked for me. Setting up a demo app to illustrate the point First, let’s set up an application that will demonstrate the most basic concept. using System; using System.Configuration; namespace ConsoleSpecificConfiguration { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Config"); Console.WriteLine(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Example Config"]); Console.ReadLine(); } } }   This does a really simple thing. Display a config when run. To do this, you also need a config file set up. My default looks as follows… <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Default"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   Your entire solution will look as follows… Running the project you will get the following amazing output…   Let’s now say instead of having one config file we want depending on whether we are running in “Debug” or “Release” for the solution configuration we want different config settings to be propagated across you can do the following… Step 1 – Create alternate config Files First add additional config files to your solution. You should have some form of naming convention for these config files, I have decided to follow a similar convention to the one used for web.config, so in my instance I am going to add a App.Debug.config and a App.Release.config file BUT you can follow any naming convention you want provided you wire up the rest of the approach to use this convention. My files look as follows.. App.Debug.config <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Debug"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   App.Release.config <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Release"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   Your solution will now look as follows… Step 2 – Create a bat file that will overwrite files The next step is to create a bat file that will overwrite one file with another. If you right click on the solution in the solution explorer there will be a menu option to add new items to the solution. Create a text file called “copyifnewer.bat” which will be our copy script. It’s contents should look as follows… @echo off echo Comparing two files: %1 with %2 if not exist %1 goto File1NotFound if not exist %2 goto File2NotFound fc %1 %2 /A if %ERRORLEVEL%==0 GOTO NoCopy echo Files are not the same. Copying %1 over %2 copy %1 %2 /y & goto END :NoCopy echo Files are the same. Did nothing goto END :File1NotFound echo %1 not found. goto END :File2NotFound copy %1 %2 /y goto END :END echo Done. Your solution should now look as follows…   Step 3 – Customize the Post Build event command line We now need to wire up everything – which we will do using the post build event command line in VS2010. Right click on your project and go to it’s properties We are now going to wire up the script so that when we build our project it will overwrite the default App.config with whatever file we want. The syntax goes as follows… call "$(SolutionDir)copyifnewer.bat" "$(ProjectDir)App.$(ConfigurationName).config" "$(ProjectDir)$(OutDir)\$(TargetFileName).config" Testing it If I now change my project configuration to Release   And then run my application I get the following output… Toggling between Release and Debug mode will show that the config file is changing each time. And that is it!

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• Agile Like Jazz

  - by Jeff Certain

  (I’ve been sitting on this for a week or so now, thinking that it needed to be tightened up a bit to make it less rambling. Since that’s clearly not going to happen, reader beware!) I had the privilege of spending around 90 minutes last night sitting and listening to Sonny Rollins play a concert at the Disney Center in LA. If you don’t know who Sonny Rollins is, I don’t know how to explain the experience; if you know who he is, I don’t need to. Suffice it to say that he has been recording professionally for over 50 years, and helped create an entire genre of music. A true master by any definition. One of the most intriguing aspects of a concert like this, however, is watching the master step aside and let the rest of the musicians play. Not just play their parts, but really play… letting them take over the spotlight, to strut their stuff, to soak up enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that Sonny Rollins has been doing this for more than a half-century. Maybe it has something to do with a kind of patience you learn when you’re on the far side of 80 – and the man can still blow a mean sax for 90 minutes without stopping! Maybe it has to do with the fact that he was out there for the love of the music and the love of the show, not because he had anything to prove to anyone and, I like to think, not for the money. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that, when you’re at that level of mastery, the other musicians are going to be good. Really good. Whatever the reasons, there was a incredible freedom on that stage – the ability to improvise, for each musician to showcase their own specialization and skills, and them come back to the common theme, back to being on the same page, as it were. All this took place in the same venue that is home to the L.A. Phil. Somehow, I can’t ever see the same kind of free-wheeling improvisation happening in that context. And, since I’m a geek, I started thinking about agility. Rollins has put together a quintet that reflects his own particular style and past. No upright bass or piano for Rollins – drums, bongos, electric guitar and bass guitar along with his sax. It’s not about the mix of instruments. Other trios, quartets, and sextets use different mixes of instruments. New Orleans jazz tends towards trombones instead of sax; some prefer cornet or trumpet. But no matter what the choice of instruments, size matters. Team sizes are something I’ve been thinking about for a while. We’re on a quest to rethink how our teams are organized. They just feel too big, too unwieldy. In fact, they really don’t feel like teams at all. Most of the time, they feel more like collections or people who happen to report to the same manager. I attribute this to a couple factors. One is over-specialization; we have a tendency to have people work in silos. Although the teams are product-focused, within them our developers are both generalists and specialists. On the one hand, we expect them to be able to build an entire vertical slice of the application; on the other hand, each developer tends to be responsible for the vertical slice. As a result, developers often work on their own piece of the puzzle, in isolation. This sort of feels like working on a jigsaw in a group – each person taking a set of colors and piecing them together to reveal a portion of the overall picture. But what inevitably happens when you go to meld all those pieces together? Inevitably, you have some sections that are too big to move easily. These sections end up falling apart under their own weight as you try to move them. Not only that, but there are other challenges – figuring out where that section fits, and how to tie it into the rest of the puzzle. Often, this is when you find a few pieces need to be added – these pieces are “glue,” if you will. The other issue that arises is due to the overhead of maintaining communications in a team. My mother, who worked in IT for around 30 years, once told me that 20% per team member is a good rule of thumb for maintaining communication. While this is a rule of thumb, it seems to imply that any team over about 6 people is going to become less agile simple because of the communications burden. Teams of ten or twelve seem like they fall into the philharmonic organizational model. Complicated pieces of music requiring dozens of players to all be on the same page requires a much different model than the jazz quintet. There’s much less room for improvisation, originality or freedom. (There are probably orchestral musicians who will take exception to this characterization; I’m calling it like I see it from the cheap seats.) And, there’s one guy up front who is running the show, whose job is to keep all of those dozens of players on the same page, to facilitate communications. Somehow, the orchestral model doesn’t feel much like a self-organizing team, either. The first violin may be the best violinist in the orchestra, but they don’t get to perform free-wheeling solos. I’ve never heard of an orchestra getting together for a jam session. But I have heard of teams that organize their work based on the developers available, rather than organizing the developers based on the work required. I have heard of teams where desired functionality is deferred – or worse yet, schedules are missed – because one critical person doesn’t have any bandwidth available. I’ve heard of teams where people simply don’t have the big picture, because there is too much communication overhead for everyone to be aware of everything that is happening on a project. I once heard Paul Rayner say something to the effect of “you have a process that is perfectly designed to give you exactly the results you have.” Given a choice, I want a process that’s much more like jazz than orchestral music. I want a process that doesn’t burden me with lots of forms and checkboxes and stuff. Give me the simplest, most lightweight process that will work – and a smaller team of the best developers I can find. This seems like the kind of process that will get the kind of result I want to be part of.

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• The Case of the Invisible Training Resource

  - by GGBlogger

  I’ve been at this programming business longer than I would like to admit. For that reason I am always looking for new training resources as anyone in this business knows all too well. I’ve looked at AppDev (way too expensive for my meager budget), LearnVisualStudio (I have a lifetime subscription), and several others. What appears to be a new version of AppDev called LearnDevNow has some good material and so it goes. So what does all this have to do with the title? I’ve been using Adobe’s Flex Builder 3 and now their latest Flash Builder 4 (a renaming of the Adobe Flex development environment). One of the offered perks on registering was a month’s subscription to Lynda.com. My first reaction was “What the heck is Lynda.com?” but I chose it and signed up. What a surprise I was in for. I’d never heard of them before but discovered one of the most comprehensive training resources I’ve ever seen – and all for $ 34.95 a month in the version that offers Exercise files. They do have a heavy focus on Adobe products but also cover a lot of Microsoft material. What bothered me is that in the time I’ve been in this business I’d never heard of them! ; Thus the allusion to “The Invisible Training Resource.” Not only do they offer beginner and in depth training but the syllabus and the instructors are some of the best I’ve seen in the industry. So I just feel that more folks need to know about this organization. If you need training in the venues they offer I can attest to the fact that they offer some of the best training available in this industry in my humble opinion. You really owe it to yourself to check out Lynda.com.

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• SharePoint Saturday DC

  - by Mark Rackley

  Wow… did you see this thing? 927 attendees? An exhibition hall full of vendors? 94 speakers? 100 sessions?? Insane is a word that comes to mind… SharePoint Saturday DC was definitely epic as far as SharePoint Saturdays go. I got to catch up with a lot of friends and make some new ones.  Met a couple of fans of the blog (hello ladies…;))  Did you know that people actually read this thing? I guess that means I need to stop putting so much garbage on here and more content. I’ll get right on that as soon as I find out how to add 6 hours to each day. Anyway, once again I did my “Wrapping Your Head Around the SharePoint Beast” session.  I tweaked it even more from Huntsville and presented to a packed room with some people sitting on the floor and standing in the aisles. It was a great crowd, very interactive and they seemed interested at least. Thank you guys so much for attending and please feel free to tell me of any suggestions you have to make the presentation better.  This is one of the presentations that will probably never die. Everyone beginning SharePoint development needs a good introduction and starting point. My goal is to make this THE session to see on the subject. So, a little interesting data about my class. Half of the room was brand new to SharePoint and only one person was using 2010. That tells me that this session still has legs and that 2007 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  I know my organization will be using 2007 for at least a couple more years. Oh yeah… the slide deck?  Here it is: SharePoint Saturday DC Slide Deck So, SharePoint Saturday was truly tremendous and if you weren’t there you missed out. @meetdux, @usher, and the rest of their crew did a spectacular job. You guys rock and are a huge asset to the community. Thanks for allowing me to speak. What’s up next for me?  I’m so glad you asked…. SHAREPOINT SATURDAY OZARKS IS JUNE 12TH! Although SharePoint Saturday Ozarks on June 12 in Harrison Arkansas will be a much more intimate event than DC, it promises to be a most memorable event. We’ve got over 30 speakers and sessions, some cool stuff to give away, and we’re going floating down the Buffalo River on the 13th. Let’s see you do THAT in DC.  :) Anyway, I hope to see you there and I would truly appreciate any help you can do to help publicize the event. We just got internet here in the hills and most people here are still looking for the “any” key….

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• What I&rsquo;m Reading &ndash; Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner&rs

  - by Dave Campbell

  I don’t have a lot of time for reading lately, so James Patterson and all those guys are *way* ahead of me … but I do try to make time to read technical material. A couple books have come across just recently and I thought I’d mention them one at a time. The book I want to mention tonight is Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner’s Guide : by Cameron Albert and Frank LaVigne. Cameron and Frank are both great guys and you’ve seen their blog posts come across my SilverlightCream posts many times. I like the writing and format of the book. It leads you quite well from one concept to the next and for a technical book, it holds your interest. You can check out a free chapter here. I have the eBook because for technical material, at least lately, I’ve gravitated toward that. I can have it with me on a USB stick at work, or at home. Read the free chapter then check out their blogs. Even if you think you know a lot of this material, I think you’ll find yourself learning something, and besides, it’s a great one-place reference. Good work guys! Technorati Tags: Silverlight 4

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• Why I Love Microsoft Development

  - by Brian Lanham

  I've been writing software for a while and recently had an opportunity to broaden my horizons and start developing for iOS. We decided to leverage, as much as possible, our existing skills and use MonoTouch and MonoDevelop by Novell.    For those of you who do not know, Mono is a .NET port originally designed for Linux but adapted for other platforms as well. MonoTouch is a port specifically for building iOS applications using the .NET framework. MonoDroid is a port (in CTP-esque release) for Android.   A MISSING COMPONENT - VISUAL DESIGNER   MonoDevelop lacks one very significant component compared with other tools I am using: NO VISUAL DESIGNER. Instead of using an integrated visual designer, MonoDevelop shells to the Mac OS "Interface Builder".  Since MonoDevelop lets me have a "Visual Studio-esque" feel *and* I get to use C#, AND it's FREE, I am gladly willing to overlook this.  In fact, it's not even a question.  Free?  Sure, I'll take it with no Visual Designer.   In my experiences I've grown from UNIX and DOS to .NET development through many steps. Java/JSP/Servlets; Windows; Web; etc. I've been doing .NET for quite a few years and I guess I just got "comfortable" with the tools.   WHY AM I NOT GETTING IT?   Interface Builder (IB) is amazingly confusing for me. I had the opportunity to speak at the Northern VA Code Camp on 12/11/2010. My presentation was "Getting Started with iOS Development using MonoTouch and C#".    At the visual design part of the presentation, I asked one of the 3 or 4 Mac developers in the room about my confusion with the IB. I don't understand why the "Classes" list includes objects. I don't understand what "File's Owner" is. And, most importantly, WHAT THE HECK IS AN OUTLET AND WHY IS IT NECESSARY?!?!?"   His response to these question (especially Outlets): "They did it wrong."   I'm accustom to a visual designer that creates variables for graphical widgets for me. Not IB. Instead, I have to create "Outlets" manually. I still do not understand why and, the explanation from a seasoned Mac developer is that it's wrong. (He received nods of confirmation from the other Mac devs in the room.)   I LOVE MS DEV   I love development for Microsoft platforms using Microsoft development tools. I love Windows 7. I love Visual Studio 2010. I love SQL Server. Azure, Entity Framework, Active Directory, Office, WCF/WF/WPF, etc. are all designed with integration in mind. They are also all designed with developers in mind.   Steve Ballmer recently ranted "It's the developers!" That's why it is relatively quick to build apps using MS tools. Clearly, MS knows that while we usually enjoy building technology solutions, we are here to make money. And we need tools that accelerate our time to market without compromising the power and quality of our solutions.   So, yeah, I am sucking up I guess. But I love Microsoft Development. Thank you, Microsoft, for providing the plethora of great development tools.    P.S. (but please slow down a bit…I'm having trouble keeping up!)

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• The Linux powered LAN Gaming House

  - by sachinghalot

  LAN parties offer the enjoyment of head to head gaming in a real-life social environment. In general, they are experiencing decline thanks to the convenience of Internet gaming, but Kenton Varda is a man who takes his LAN gaming very seriously. His LAN gaming house is a fascinating project, and best of all, Linux plays a part in making it all work.Varda has done his own write ups (short, long), so I'm only going to give an overview here. The setup is a large house with 12 gaming stations and a single server computer.The client computers themselves are rack mounted in a server room, and they are linked to the gaming stations on the floor above via extension cables (HDMI for video and audio and USB for mouse and keyboard). Each client computer, built into a 3U rack mount case, is a well specced gaming rig in its own right, sporting an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 560 along with a 60GB SSD drive.Originally, the client computers ran Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows and the games executed under WINE, but Varda had to abandon this scheme. As he explains on his site:"Amazingly, a majority of games worked fine, although many had minor bugs (e.g. flickering mouse cursor, minor rendering artifacts, etc.). Some games, however, did not work, or had bad bugs that made them annoying to play."Subsequently, the gaming computers have been moved onto a more conventional gaming choice, Windows 7. It's a shame that WINE couldn't be made to work, but I can sympathize as it's rare to find modern games that work perfectly and at full native speed. Another problem with WINE is that it tends to suffer from regressions, which is hardly surprising when considering the difficulty of constantly improving the emulation of the Windows API. Varda points out that he preferred working with Linux clients as they were easier to modify and came with less licensing baggage.Linux still runs the server and all of the tools used are open source software. The hardware here is a Intel Xeon E3-1230 with 4GB of RAM. The storage hanging off this machine is a bit more complex than the clients. In addition to the 60GB SSD, it also has 2x1TB drives and a 240GB SDD.When the clients were running Linux, they booted over PXE using a toolchain that will be familiar to anyone who has setup Linux network booting. DHCP pointed the clients to the server which then supplied PXELINUX using TFTP. When booted, file access was accomplished through network block device (NBD). This is a very easy to use system that allows you to serve the contents of a file as a block device over the network. The client computer runs a user mode device driver and the device can be mounted within the file system using the mount command.One snag with offering file access via NBD is that it's difficult to impose any security restrictions on different areas of the file system as the server only sees a single file. The advantage is perfomance as the client operating system simply sees a block device, and besides, these security issues aren't relevant in this setup.Unfortunately, Windows 7 can't use NBD, so, Varda had to switch to iSCSI (which works in both server and client mode under Linux). His network cards are not compliant with this standard when doing a netboot, but fortunately, gPXE came to the rescue, and he boostraps it over PXE. gPXE is also available as an ISO image and is worth knowing about if you encounter an awkward machine that can't manage a network boot. It can also optionally boot from a HTTP server rather than the more traditional TFTP server.According to Varda, booting all 12 machines over the Gigabit Ethernet network is surprisingly fast, and once booted, the machines don't seem noticeably slower than if they were using local storage. Once loaded, most games attempt to load in as much data as possible, filling the RAM, and the the disk and network bandwidth required is small. It's worth noting that these are aspects of this project that might differ from some other thin client scenarios.At time of writing, it doesn't seem as though the local storage of the client machines is being utilized. Instead, the clients boot into Windows from an image on the server that contains the operating system and the games themselves. It uses the copy on write feature of LVM so that any writes from a client are added to a differencing image allocated to that client. As the administrator, Varda can log into the Linux server and authorize changes to the master image for updates etc.SummaryOverall, Varda estimates the total cost of the project at about $40,000, and of course, he needed a property that offered a large physical space in order to house the computers and the gaming workstations. Obviously, this project has stark differences to most thin client projects. The balance between storage, network usage, GPU power and security would not be typical of an office installation, for example. The only letdown is that WINE proved to be insufficiently compatible to run a wide variety of modern games, but that is, perhaps, asking too much of it, and hats off to Varda for trying to make it work.

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• Does Windows 7 Mobile look a bit like this???

  - by BizTalk Visionary

  Thanks to my work mate Dave Robinson we have a new mock-up of Windows Mobile..

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• TFS API Add Favorites programmatically

  - by Tarun Arora

  01 – What are we trying to achieve? In this blog post I’ll be showing you how to add work item queries as favorites, it is also possible to use the same technique to add build definition as favorites. Once a shared query or build definition has been added as favorite it will show up on the team web access.  In this blog post I’ll be showing you a work around in the absence of a proper API how you can add queries to team favorites. 02 – Disclaimer There is no official API for adding favorites programmatically. In the work around below I am using the Identity service to store this data in a property bag which is used during display of favorites on the team web site. This uses an internal data structure that could change over time, there is no guarantee about the key names or content of the values. What is shown below is a workaround for a missing API. 03 – Concept There is no direct API support for favorites, but you could work around it using the identity service in TFS.  Favorites are stored in the property bag associated with the TeamFoundationIdentity (either the ‘team’ identity or the users identity depending on if these are ‘team’ or ‘my’ favorites).  The data is stored as json in the property bag of the identity, the key being prefixed by ‘Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Server.IdentityFavorites’. References - Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client - using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client; - using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Client; - using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Common; - using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.ProcessConfiguration.Client; - using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server; - using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client; Services - IIdentityManagementService2 - TfsTeamService - WorkItemStore 04 – Solution Lets start by connecting to TFS programmatically // Create an instance of the services to be used during the program private static TfsTeamProjectCollection _tfs; private static ProjectInfo _selectedTeamProject; private static WorkItemStore _wis; private static TfsTeamService _tts; private static TeamSettingsConfigurationService _teamConfig; private static IIdentityManagementService2 _ids; // Connect to TFS programmatically public static bool ConnectToTfs() { var isSelected = false; var tfsPp = new TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, false); tfsPp.ShowDialog(); _tfs = tfsPp.SelectedTeamProjectCollection; if (tfsPp.SelectedProjects.Any()) { _selectedTeamProject = tfsPp.SelectedProjects[0]; isSelected = true; } return isSelected; } Lets get all the work item queries from the selected team project static readonly Dictionary<string, string> QueryAndGuid = new Dictionary<string, string>(); // Get all queries and query guid in the selected team project private static void GetQueryGuidList(IEnumerable<QueryItem> query) { foreach (QueryItem subQuery in query) { if (subQuery.GetType() == typeof(QueryFolder)) GetQueryGuidList((QueryFolder)subQuery); else { QueryAndGuid.Add(subQuery.Name, subQuery.Id.ToString()); } } }   Pass the name of a valid Team in your team project and a name of a valid query in your team project. The team details will be extracted using the team name and query GUID will be extracted using the query name. These details will be used to construct the key and value that will be passed to the SetProperty method in the Identity service.           Key           “Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Server.IdentityFavorites..<TeamProjectURI>.<TeamId>.WorkItemTracking.Queries.<newGuid1>”           Value           "{"data":"<QueryGuid>","id":"<NewGuid1>","name":"<QueryKey>","type":"Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.QueryItem”}"           // Configure a Work Item Query for the given team private static void ConfigureTeamFavorites(string teamName, string queryName) { _ids = _tfs.GetService<IIdentityManagementService2>(); var g = Guid.NewGuid(); var guid = string.Empty; var teamDetail = _tts.QueryTeams(_selectedTeamProject.Uri).FirstOrDefault(t => t.Name == teamName); foreach (var q in QueryAndGuid.Where(q => q.Key == queryName)) { guid = q.Value; } if(guid == string.Empty) { Console.WriteLine("Query '{0}' - Not found!", queryName); return; } var key = string.Format( "Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Server.IdentityFavorites..{0}.{1}.WorkItemTracking.Queries{2}", new Uri(_selectedTeamProject.Uri).Segments.LastOrDefault(), teamDetail.Identity.TeamFoundationId, g); var value = string.Format( @"{0}""data"":""{1}"",""id"":""{2}"",""name"":""{3}"",""type"":""Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.QueryItem""{4}", "{", guid, g, QueryAndGuid.FirstOrDefault(q => q.Value==guid).Key, "}"); teamDetail.Identity.SetProperty(IdentityPropertyScope.Local, key, value); _ids.UpdateExtendedProperties(teamDetail.Identity); Console.WriteLine("{0}Added Query '{1}' as Favorite", Environment.NewLine, queryName); }   If you have any questions or suggestions leave a comment. Enjoy!

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• Why are so many DBCC commands undocumented?

  - by DBA

  Paul Randal of SQLskills.com does a great job of answering the question of why there are so many undocumented DBCC commands in his post Why are so many DBCC commands undocumented? I would like to go on to say that not only does this apply to the DBCC commands but is some respect to all parts of SQL, other Servers, IDE's, Operating Systems, just about everywhere. There is always something that just does not make it into the official documentation. And as Paul points out probably never will make it. That could be why there are so many "Tips & Tricks" types of books, blog post, etc. everywhere you look. And I also agree with Janos's comments on Paul's post, which was "I'm fine with them undocumented. All of us who need to use these commands know where to find "documentation" and whom to ask ". Till later,

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• Unexpected issues with SessionPageStatePersiste

  - by geekrutherford

  Several iterations ago I implemented the SessionPageStatePersister in an application as a way to cut down on the size of the hidden ViewState input on aspx pages.   At first it seemed utterly fantasic. The size of the ViewState appeared to be drastically reduced and the application did not appear to peform any slower than baseline.   Enter the iFrame &amp; user control. I added a user control which pings the web server every 20 seconds in order to show updated application information to the user (new messages, reports, etc.) After releasing this nifty little control into the QA environment I quickly began receiving emails from testers about "post back" related error messages which mostly centered around invalid ViewState exceptions.   At first I dismissed it as something related to all of the AJAX requests happening on the page and considered turning off page event validation. However, upon further investigation I came across the following article:   Things That You Should Watch Out For When Using SessionPageStatePersister   In this article the author specifically states:   If you application uses frames than each frame request will create a new session view state item and as before it will remove items when reaching the maximum, you come into a situation that one of the frames will probably loose it session view state because other frames did post backs.   Oh snap! That is precisely what I am doing. That combined with multiple users on the application equals dropped ViewStates!   The temporary fix has been to disable the use of the SessionPageStatePersister in my application. This results in a bloated hidden ViewState input, but the web server is no longer tasked with maintaing/retreiving it and the app. no longer loses ViewState information.

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• Registration is Open for Spring 2010 Event!

  - by Day of .Net in Ann Arbor

  Day of .NET in Ann Arbor is a one-day conference on all things .NET organized by developers for developers. This event is being offered at a minimal cost to anyone interested in .NET development, and will take place on May 1, 2010 at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, MI. Details: http://www.dayofdotnet.org/AnnArbor/Spring2010/ Registration: http://dodn.eventbrite.com/ The Day of .NET in Ann Arbor is a collaborative effort between the following INETA member groups: Great Lakes Area .NET User Group  http://www.migang.org/ Ann Arbor .NET Developer Group  http://www.aadnd.org/ Northwest Ohio .NET User Group  http://www.nwnug.com/

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• Inline code within HEAD section of ASP Web Form

  - by geekrutherford

  Today I needed to include inline code within the HEAD section of an Web Form in order to dynamically include stylesheets based on the theme set for the application.   Below is an example:      <link href="../../Resources/Themes/<% = Page.Theme %>Grid.Default.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">   Upon saving and viewing the page I noted that the code was not being interpreted and instead was being treated as a string literal.  How to get around it?  Add a panel control in the HEAD section and place the links to the stylesheets as in the example above within the panel.  For whatever reason, ASP.NET does not want to interpret inline code in the HEAD section but will allow you to add .NET controls in the HEAD section.

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• Microsoft JScript runtime error in Visual studio 2010

  - by anirudha

  There is many tool exist to debug JavaScript visual studio , firebug and some other great plugin are one of them. here I show you solution for Microsoft JScript runtime error: Object doesn't support this property or method  if you search on Google for how to debug Javascript in Visual studio. all of them told you to follow this instruction :- go to Internet option in IE > advanced tab > Browsing section > uhcheck the both option disable script debugging for IE (internet explorer) disable script debugging (others). that’s the information you read are outdate or not true these days. in visual studio you can play with JavaScript debugging even these option is check or unchecked. off-course you  can try these step in express version of visual studio. I found a little problem that my code [based on jQuery plugin] try to call some function. some of them not implement in browser so they call other so that’s fine and work in every browser. when visual studio found some function they trying to call and not implemented in browser I use to debug they tell me Microsoft JScript runtime error: Object doesn't support this property or method  they tell me again whenever I put refresh [f5] in browser. so the thing they do you never like that. see error window first whenever code is not buggy and see everytime before see the page you want to see. this behavior harsh you. there is no problem whenever you not commonly used IE but whenever you really want to debugging you got some pain too from the behavior of this. well I have some patch for that if you really like the debugging in Visual studio with IE. so if you sure that code is not buggy or you really not want to see that’s window here is trick. when you debug the JavaScript in IE choose the compact mode and they never force you to see window first who tell the thing you not want to see. How to do that for reliefs from this pain in visual studio after debug the project or website IE gone automatically launch. go to Developer tool by pressing f12 > you see window something like this:- by the way they give you document mode IE 7 as default or browser mode based on your settings. first thing is that you need to set the compact view [any ] in browser mode. and next time the error window never come again who tell you Microsoft JScript runtime error: Object doesn't support this property or method

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• Azure Blob storage defrag

  - by kaleidoscope

  The Blob Storage is really handy for storing temporary data structures during a scaled-out distributed processing. Yet, the lifespan of those data structures should not exceed the one of the underlying operation, otherwise clutter and dead data could potentially start filling up your Blob Storage Temporary data in cloud computing is very similar to memory collection in object oriented languages, when it's not done automatically by the framework, temp data tends to leak. In particular, in cloud computing,  it's pretty easy to end up with storage leaks due to: Collection omission. App crash. Service interruption. All those events cause garbage to accumulate into your Blob Storage. Then, it must be noted that for most cloud apps, I/O costs are usually predominant compared to pure storage costs. Enumerating through your whole Blob Storage to clean the garbage is likely to be an expensive solution. Lokesh, M

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• Moodle 2 pages loading up to 2000% faster

  - by TJ

  On average our Moodle 2 pages were loading in 2.8 seconds, now they load in as little as 0.12 seconds, so that’s like 2333.333% faster!What was it I hear you say?Well it was the database connection, or more correctly the database library. I was using FreeTDS http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Installing_MSSQL_for_PHP, but now I’m using the new Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for PHP for SQL Server http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20098. I’m in a Windows Server IT department, and in both our live and development environments, we have Moodle 2.2.3, IIS 7.5, and PHP 5.3.10 running on two Windows Server 2008 R2 servers and using MS Network Load Balancing.Since moving to Moodle 2, the pages have always loaded much more slowly than they did in Moodle 1.9, I’ve been chasing this issue for quite a while. I had previously tried the Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server 2.0, but my testing showed it was slower than the FreeTDS driver.Then yesterday I found Microsoft had released the new version, Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for PHP for SQL Server, so I thought I’d give it a run, and wow what a difference it made.Pages that were loading in 2.8 seconds, now they load in as little as 0.12 seconds, 2333.333% faster…I have more testing to do, but so far it’s looking good, I have scheduled multi user load testing for early next week (fingers crossed).To make the change all I need to do was,download the driverscopy the relevant files to PHP\ext (for us they were php_pdo_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll and php_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll) install the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client x64 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29065 add to PHP.ini, extension=php_pdo_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll, extension=php_sqlsrv_53_nts.dllremove form PHP.ini, extension=php_dblib.dllvchange in PHP.ini, mssql.textlimit = 20971520 and mssql.textsize = 20971520change Moodle config.php, $CFG->dbtype = 'sqlsrv'; and 'dbpersist' => Trueand then reboot and test…I've browsed courses, backed up/restored some really large and complicated courses, deleted courses etc. etc. all good.Still more testing to do but, hey this is good start...Hope this helps anyone experiencing the same slowness…

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